Since the way blocks currently work require the output to be assigned to $content, you need to use that.
How you merge the data really depends on the blocks you are are trying to merge and the html layout they are using. At the hardest level you need to remove the html layout and re-write it to be able to place the data in it in the correct place. At the easiest level you could possibly just put both block codes into the same file, wrap the output in a new container and simply float the output of one to the left and the output from the other to the right (assuming you want the data side by side).
That's the basic concept but since we are now using Bootstrap and the way blocks function might change, I'm not sure it is worth the time to write a tutorial.
If you need less of a gap between blocks, why not just alter the theme? It would be much easier to remove the top and bottom padding and other styling by altering the theme and then you could make it look just like 2 columns instead of 2 columns with sections.

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